A Marquess' Forbidden Desire (Steamy Historical Regency)

by Lucinda Nelson

  If Eliza had heard, she would have torn her own hair out.

  In her sister’s frustration, she was far meaner and would berate Marianne whenever she tried to make conversation. Given Marianne’s already delicate emotional state, she could hardly stand such meanness and spent much of her days outside, trying to read.

  Trying and failing. Most of the time she would only be able to manage a few lines before she put the book down in her lap and started thinking about Bath. And the man she’d met there.

  One afternoon, the weather turned cold and drizzly, forcing her to go back inside. She dreaded it, as she always did, because she knew that her sister would be stamping through the house snapping at servants and family members alike as she went. No one was safe from her temper. Least of all Marianne, who seemed to provoke her by just existing.

  “Hello, dear sister,” came a chirpy voice as she walked inside. Had she not called her sister, Marianne would have bet money that it was someone else speaking. Because Eliza never sounded chirpy.

  “Hello, Eliza,” she answered, cautiously.

  “Won’t you sit?” She gestured to the chaise lounge. She stood smiling… looking like a doll.

  “Alright,” Marianne answered, slowly. She took a seat and lay the book in her lap. “You look… well,” she remarked, sounding almost wary.

  “Well that is because I have good news.”

  “Oh?”

  “She most certainly does,” her mother said. She practically floated into the room. She approached Eliza and kissed her on the cheek with unbridled affection. An unusual thing for their mother to feel. “She is to be married,” her mother said, sounding giddy.

  “Yes,” Eliza answered, with a snide smile and a high chin. “To a Marquess, no less. A handsome, wealthy gentleman.”

  Marianne was, frankly, speechless. And unsmiling. She just stared at her sister, unblinking. “Well?” Her sister snapped. “Will you not congratulate me? Or are you too small and mean to be anything but envious?”

  “Don’t be mean-spirited, dear,” their mother said, still smiling at Eliza. “There’s no need. There’s no need for anything but happiness now. Don’t you agree, Marianne?”

  This snapped her out of her silence. “Of course,” she said quickly. “Of course, I am so very happy for you, Eliza.”

  “Just as I said,” Eliza rambled. “It was worth waiting for a real man who could prove himself deserving. And all this time my family has told me to settle for less and yet here I am, benefiting from my patience. From my understanding of my own worth.”

  “Yes, my dear, you were quite right to wait. Wasn’t she Marianne?”

  “She was,” Marianne answered, in a slightly mechanical voice. She watched her mother play with Eliza’s hair like she was a child who’d pleased her.

  “And you know what this means for you, don’t you?”

  Marianne didn’t answer at first. She did know what it meant, but she didn’t want to say it. She could practically feel Eliza burning holes into her with her eyes. Eliza wasn’t ready to relinquish the attention just yet, which suited Marianne just fine. She didn’t want any attention.

  “Do you know what it means?” Her mother pressed, more pointedly.

  “Yes, mother,” she answered, with an empty expression. She feigned a smile. “It means I may begin to find a husband.”

  “It certainly does. Soon, both my girls will be married.”

  “Perhaps not soon,” Eliza retorted. “We cannot know how long it will take her to find a gentleman who is willing.”

  “Or perhaps I will wait for the perfect match, as you did,” Marianne said. Her voice was harder than usual, which caused Eliza to blink at her in surprise. It wasn’t like Marianne to be snide. But she was tired and still feeling heartsore. She didn’t have any patience for Eliza’s meanness right now. She hoped that her tone reminded Eliza that she wasn’t fooled by her show of ‘being picky’. She knew all too well that Eliza had been turned down several times by gentlemen who had heard rumors about her.

  That was the one problem for Eliza. She may have wanted to find a husband of wealth and rank, but she hadn’t wanted to open up the door to marriage for Marianne. It had been the sole benefit of being a spinster. Keeping Marianne from finding love.

  Well, she had found love. And it had scorned her. So perhaps she was destined for rejection for a time, as Eliza had been.

  “I don’t expect it will take her long at all,” her father remarked. Marianne looked up to see him walking into the drawing room.

  “Are you not going to congratulate me, father?”

  He ignored her and crossed the room to stand beside Marianne. “She is far less picky than you.”

  This made Eliza go red in the face. “Picky?”

  “It was not pickiness, husband,” their mother said, in a stern voice. “It was wisdom.”

  “Yes, wisdom,” he answered, in a dull and disbelieving voice. But he humored them, because it was easier to do so. Nobody pushed the subject further, though it was clear that Eliza was simmering on the edge of a temper tantrum.

  “This is not the celebration I anticipated,” she said, in a voice like steel.

  “Well, then perhaps we should celebrate more formally. We could visit your fiancé.”

  This brightened Eliza’s mood. “A grand idea, mother.”

  “It is settled then,” their mother said.

  “Father,” Eliza said again. “Will you truly say nothing?”

  “Considering that it was your mother who made the match, do you not think we better congratulate her?”

  Their mother smiled. An unusual sight. “I had an instinct about him when I spoke to his mother. A fine gentleman.”

  “Then you have not met him?” Marianne remarked.

  “I did not need to meet him. It was a match made in heaven. A match that mother may have made, but it takes a wise woman to accept.”

  Their father conceded on this matter, but Marianne knew that it was only to avoid a tantrum ensuing. An Eliza tantrum was a truly frightening thing to behold.

  “If you have not met him, how do you know that he is handsome? As you have said he is.”

  “By rumor, obviously,” Eliza replied, with an eye roll. “Do you really know nothing?”

  Marianne didn’t rise to the bait. “And you are certain that you want to marry a gentleman you don’t know? What if he is cruel?”

  Again, she dismissed her. “You speak of things you don’t understand. Mother, will you make her quiet?”

  “If he were a cruel man, we would have heard by now. Men of his rank can keep nothing hidden.”

  “Precisely,” Eliza added.

  But Marianne remained concerned. Though Eliza could be mean, she was still her sister and Marianne loved her dearly. Yes, they bickered from time to time. But deep down, Marianne knew that Eliza bore as many insecurities as she herself did. If not more. And she wanted to protect her sister if she could.

  But it didn’t look like she could.

  Her mother and sister had made up their minds.

  Later that evening, Marianne expressed her concern to her father when they were alone. “Do you think he is a good man?”

  “My darling,” her father answered. “I do not think it matters a great deal. Your sister is extremely strong willed. I don’t think she wants a good man, necessarily. I think she wants a man she can control. And very few men could compete with her strength of will.”

  That did not sound much better than her fears that the man might be cruel. “Then we are pawning her off on a gentleman who does not know what he is getting into?”

  Her father touched her cheek and kissed her forehead. “I know it is difficult, my dear, but this is out of our hands. It is the decision of your sister, your mother, and this gentleman. We play no part.”

  She frowned, but nodded. “Very well.”

  “In the meantime, do try to stay out of your sister’s way. For your sake. She will disguise it well, but she will be nerv
ous. And you know how she can be when she is nervous.”

  A terror.

  “Why should she be nervous?” Marianne asked. “The match is made.”

  “Men have turned her down before, Marianne. It may happen again. And if it does, with the marriage already arranged, your sister may not recover from it.”

  A terrible thought. Marianne nodded and bid her father goodnight. When she retired, she lay in bed and thought about the match. Soon, if all went as it should, Eliza would not be living with them anymore. And it would be Marianne’s time to marry.

  It should have brought her joy. It would have, once upon a time. But that was before Bath. Now she knew a bitter and sad truth. That no man would live up to the man who’d left her behind at that fair.

  Chapter 12

  Lord Alexander Anthony Redmond, Marquess of Riversdale

  It did not take his father long to secure a match. Just a few months, during which time Alexander began to take responsibility for the position of Marquess. After a few weeks, his father asked him to go hunting with him.

  “You do know how to hunt, don’t you?”

  “Yes, father. I learned at Oxford.”

  “Very good. It was about time. Shall we depart?”

  Alexander nodded and they went to the stables to choose their horses. Most of the hunt was spent in silence, except when necessary. It was Alexander who took down the deer they’d been pursuing, though his father did not praise him for it. Only inclined his head. As close to praise as he was going to get. As they hauled their kill back to the house, his father spoke at last.

  “I have made a match for you.”

  “That is good,” was all Alexander said. His face was calm and blank.

  He felt his father peering at him. “Do you not wish to know her name?”

  “What is her name?” Not that it really mattered.

  “Lady Eliza Purcell. Daughter of the Baron of Westlake.”

  “I do not know of her,” Alexander acknowledged.

  “No, you do not. But she is a fine match.”

  “Very good. Thank you for arranging it.”

  Again, his father scrutinized him carefully. “You do not have any questions? Do you want to know what she looks like?”

  He shrugged in answer. “As I said before, I trust your judgement.” Which meant, he didn’t care.

  Another moment of silence, before his father said, “I wonder if I have underestimated you. You are much changed since Oxford.”

  He was much changed since Bath. Years of study couldn’t compete with three days spent doing something unexpected. His life was mapped out before him, which did not leave much room for change. But an adventure… that could change someone a great deal.

  He didn’t say any of this. They rode back to the house, dismounted and had the deer taken away. Alexander looked at it as it was taken. The truth was that he didn’t like hunting. It was a necessary part of his life. One of the many things he’d had to learn so that he could fit in.

  But seeing those dead eyes brought him no joy.

  “The family is coming tonight,” his father said as they stepped inside.

  “I look forward to it,” Alexander lied.

  ***

  Lady Marianne Purcell, Daughter of Baron Westlake

  They were in the carriage, on their way to Riversdale. “Would you stop fidgeting?” Her sister snapped at her. Marianne blinked up at her. She’d been tapping her foot to the sound of a gentleman playing music by the side of the ride. She stopped. She knew that her sister was agitated and it wasn’t worth upsetting her.

  “It will be alright,” Marianne said, softly.

  Eliza looked at her out of the corner of her eye. Marianne could see that she was trying to scowl, but there was a tiny furrow between her brows. “I know that,” she said, quickly, but with less sharpness in her face. She was wringing her hands in her lap.

  Marianne didn’t press her any more than that. By the time they arrived, Eliza looked a little less agitated. She kept her chin up high as she stepped out of carriage and carried herself like a queen.

  Marianne stole a glimpse out of the window. She could see two gentleman and a lady waiting for them, along with their staff who stood a little further back.

  Her mother and father followed Eliza out. Leaving Marianne in the carriage for a moment. She was meant to follow right away, but in their absence she just took a breath and basked in the momentary solitude. She didn’t want to be here. Not because she wasn’t happy for her sister. She was. But because she found socializing difficult in the recent months.

  She liked to be alone a lot more than she once had.

  Becky hadn’t found anything out about the Knight and Marianne was starting to lose hope. Perhaps it was time she tried to move on. And perhaps meeting her sister’s fiancé and his family was the start of it.

  She stepped out of the carriage.

  No one seemed to notice. They were greeting one another. Marianne stepped up behind them and stood quietly.

  “You are most welcome,” the older gentleman said. “I am Lord William Redmond, Duke of Riversdale. And this is my wife, the Lady Eleanor Redmond.” Then he gestured to the man beside him. “May I introduce you to our son, Lord Alexander Anthony Redmond, the Marquess of Riversdale.”

  Marianne couldn’t see past Eliza and her mother, so she didn’t see the Marquess at first. It was their mother who introduced each of them, but she seemed to momentarily forget about Marianne.

  It was her father who rectified that mistake. He gestured towards her and said, “And this is our youngest daughter, Lady Marianne Purcell.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” she said and curtsied.

  “And you, my Lady,” a gentleman said. The Marquess, she realized. She looked up at him, Eliza and her mother having moved to greet the Duke and Duchess, and was momentarily taken aback.

  His eyes were wonderfully green, like her own. And like another man she knew. The sudden memory of the Knight made her heartbeat stutter. Was his eye color more common than she’d once thought, or was she only imagining it now?

  She supposed this was the Marquess to be married to her sister. And she had to admit that rumor had been fair to him. He was a handsome gentleman. He was of a good height with wide shoulders and strong arms. The cut of his jaw was so perfect that it was practically sculpted and his eyes looked young and gentle.

  There was a small scar on his cheek.

  “Thank you, my Lord,” she answered.

  He was watching her in a peculiar way, making her wonder if her hair was out of place. Or if she had something on her dress. But when he turned towards the house to lead them inside, she looked down at saw nothing strange about herself at all.

  “Oh, what a wonderful home you have,” Eliza said. She was speaking too quickly and had pushed past Marianne to stand beside the Marquess. His parents followed behind the pair, talking to Marianne and Eliza’s mother and father. Marianne walked at the back, on her own.

  She was looking at the back of the Marquess’ head. He had a full head of thick, brown locks. They looked soft. There was something striking about him, without a doubt. She imagined that Eliza would be very happy indeed. She could hear the giddiness in her voice as she babbled on, barely letting the man get a word in.

  Marianne watched him while they sat in the drawing room. She watched him when they went to the dining room to eat. There was something about him that made her feel odd.

  Not a comfortable feeling. She wished he’d speak more. That might help her work him out. But Eliza was still commanding the conversation.

  The Marquess was nodding at something Eliza said. And then his eyes lifted and met hers from across the table. He was frowning.

  Why shouldn’t he frown? She’d been staring at him.

  Marianne resolved that she wouldn’t look at him any longer. She stared at her food instead.

  “And you, my Lady? Do you like to dance?”

  Marianne pushed her food around with her
fork.

  “Marianne,” her mother said, sharply. Marianne looked up from her plate.

  “Yes, mother?”

  “The Marquess asked you a question.”

  He did?

  Her cheeks went pink and she looked at the Marquess. He was smiling a little, though both Eliza and her mother were openly agitated.

  “Do you like to dance, my Lady?” He asked again and she was thankful that he didn’t make her ask him to repeat himself. She swallowed. She loved to dance.